When sliced food items, such as sliced tomatoes and sliced onions, are to be used at a restaurant or other food service institution, a substantial amount of preparation time would be required at the restaurant to cut and otherwise prepare the sliced products. Whole food products that are purchased and delivered to the restaurant would have to be cleaned, sliced and made available for placement on salads, sandwiches, or other menu items. It is difficult for the person slicing the food items to prepare slices of uniform width and consistency, and there is a substantial amount of waste because of improper slicing and handling the products.
The owners and managers of a restaurant chain usually desire to present a uniform food product, such as hamburgers of uniform size, appearance and taste, with tomatoes and/or onions applied to the hamburger, with the hamburgers and all of its ingredients being substantially in identical form one restaurant to the other. It is important that tomatoes and onions, in particular, be sliced to a desired thickness when placed on sandwiches, salads, etc. of a restaurant chain. This provides the customer with confidence that the food products will be uniform from one restaurant to the other within the chain of restaurants. Accordingly, restaurant managers prefer to receive food items properly prepared and in proper condition for placement on a sandwich, salad, etc. for immediate service to the customer without preparation steps such as slicing the food products.
Further, the operators of large restaurants prefer to receive tomatoes in a sliced form in a shipping tray that not only supports the tomatoes during storage, delivery, refrigeration, and service, but also in a shipping tray that expedites convenient retrieval of the sliced food product from the shipping tray.
Article slicing methods and machines are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,861,629, and in Patent Publication No. US-2006/0021484 A1, published Feb. 2, 2006. These publications disclose slicing multiple products, such as tomatoes, simultaneously so that the tomatoes are delivered with their end heels removed and with the central portion of each tomato formed in multiple slices. The multiple slices are gathered or “racked” into a single length of multiple sliced tomatoes and then the tomatoes are deposited in an awaiting shipping tray. Therefore, the prior art shows the concept of delivering multiple tomatoes in sliced form to a delivery mechanism that deposits the tomatoes in a shipping tray. Accordingly, applicant adopts herein, in their entireties, Publication No. US-2006/0021484 A1 and U.S. Pat. No. 7,861,629. There are other article slicers apparently capable of cutting products into slices and gathering the slices of several products together for delivery to a single package.
It is desirable to have the slicing process function rapidly, uniformly, efficiently, and with enough gentle care to not damage the food products, and with the ability to deliver the food products in a handy, attractive condition. For example, it is desirable that tomatoes be sliced and packaged with such gentle care that the juices of the tomato are substantially maintained in the tomato slices, not exuded from the tomato, and that the circular shape of the perimeter of the tomato be maintained without bruising or other damage.
With regard to sliced tomatoes, sliced onions, and other fragile sliced food products that are cut on automated slicers, the most common shipping container for these food products for packing, delivery, and retrieval of the products are shipping trays that accommodate single or double rows of products. The shipping trays are open top trays with opposed side walls spaced apart from one another a distance that is approximately the same as the breadth of one or two breadths of the products to be retrieved and shipped in the shipping tray. The shipping tray has an upper rim that is higher than the height of the contents of the shipping tray so that a protective transparent sheet may be adhesively applied to the rim, thereby closing the shipping tray about the sliced food products.
For three row shipping trays, sliced food products must be loaded by hand in order to properly place the maximum number of the sliced products in the trays. However, there have been efforts to automatically load and ship sliced food products in three row shipping trays that would have three internal spaces, each of which would accommodate a single row of the sliced food products.
For example, FIGS. 1A and 1B illustrate three-row shipping trays that are sized for receiving three rows of sliced products. Both of the illustrated shipping trays include a perimeter rim 11 at the upper edge of the shipping tray, opposed side walls 12 and 13, and opposed end walls 14 and 15. The corners 17-20 of the shipping trays are rounded and extend upwardly from the bottom wall 16 to the rim 11. Rounded corners 17-20 join the opposed side walls to the opposed end walls. The rounded corners 17-20, the perimeter rim 11, the side and end walls and the bottom wall 16 are shaped so as to form a strong structural shape that can receive and maintain three rows of sliced tomatoes or other sliced products and which may be stacked one upon the other after a transparent film has been applied to the perimeter rim 11. The shape of the shipping trays is not only calculated for snugly receiving the sliced products, but also for forming a structural shape of sufficient strength and durability for its intended use.
Non-absorbent shipping trays sized for shipping three rows of sliced products, such as sliced onions, may have a substantially flat bottom surface with parallel ribs. The ribs may be shallow, as shown in FIG. 1A, for shipping dry products, such as sliced onions, or deeper for collecting moisture from moist products, such as sliced tomatoes. A third three row absorbent shipping try is shown in FIG. 1B. This three row shipping tray may be used to pack tomatoes and other products that tend to release moisture and may have upwardly extending ribs 22 formed in the bottom wall for creating a plurality of cavities 24. The ribs help strengthen the shipping trays, and a desiccant or other material may be placed in the cavities 24 for the purpose of absorbing liquid exuded from the work product. A porous film (not shown) may be applied to the ribs to separate the desiccant from the work product received in the shipping tray and to form a substantially flat false bottom in the tray. The ribs 22 may also help to maintain the sliced products in their own rows.
It is desirable to stack the products on their edges in the shipping trays with enough lateral support that they do not become separated or tilted from a vertical attitude. This maximizes the number of slices that can be placed in the shipping tray and tends to avoid the loss of juices from the work product, such as the juices from the slices of tomatoes. This is accomplished by placing enough slices in each row of the shipping tray so that the endmost slices engaged the end walls of the shipping tray and the end walls support the slices in an upstanding attitude.
While the configuration of the three-row shipping tray of FIGS. 1A and 1B has met with some success when loaded by hand, there is a problem in loading the shipping tray directly from an automated slicer with sliced products such as sliced tomatoes, sliced onions, or other sliced products. When the sliced products are moved downwardly into the two side rows of the shipping tray, the rims 11 at the rounded corners 17-20 of the shipping tray interfere with the downward movement of the endmost slices of the products. As shown in FIG. 3, the endmost slices 26 of the outer rows of products project over the rim 11 and tend to engage the rim at the rounded corners 17-20 of the shipping tray at the position where the end walls intersect the side walls, as indicated by numerals 28. The result is that the endmost slices of the horizontally stacked products received directly from an automated slicer are likely to be damaged from being forced into a place where there is no space for receiving them.
Another likely result is that the endmost slices likely will not enter the shipping tray. The non-entry of the endmost slices into the shipping tray presents a problem in that the packing process must be interrupted and the equipment cleaned up in order to continue the packing process.
A solution to this problem is to place shorter stacks of products in the shipping trays so that the products do not engage the rim 11 at the rounded corners 17-20. However, by using this method to overcome the problem, fewer slices are received in the shipping tray and the products typically will be more loosely maintained within the shipping tray and not as likely to maintain the desirable upright positions in the shipping tray. If additional products are to be hand-loaded at the corners of the shipping tray to fill the tray, additional labor costs would be required.